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Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Working Mama Wednesday - Breakfast & Lunch

As a working mama, breakfast & lunch are two meals that are almost always eaten out of the home. If we're not careful (and we're not always careful) we can easily end up eating out for breakfast and lunch too. That's not good for our stomachs or our wallets.

I haven't quite figured out how to avoid too much eating out. I mean, the solution is obvious - prepare meals at home. It should be esay and frankly it is except for our apparent aversion to eating leftovers and delight in treating ourselves by eating out. I can't tell you how often we have really yummy leftovers that go bad because we just didn't eat it. I also can't tell you how often I've lost tupperware in the fridge here at work because I left it in there so long I forgot it was there on deep cleaning day (which is this Friday...better go take a look!). I'm not mad about it - it's what I get for preparing a decent lunch and then choosing to go out and buy something anyway.

Nevertheless, I'm trying to do a better job at preparing lunches that I eat and making sure we eat breakfast out only on sporadic occasions. It's easier now that I have two kiddos who need to eat breakfast at home instead of one. It used to be that the fosters attended a school that fed them breakfast while Logie had to eat breakfast before school. He's not a big eater in the morning so that usually meant a piece of fruit or a cup of cereal with milk that he "ate" on the way. Now that #4 is in school with him and has to eat breakfast early too, we are getting up earlier, eating breakfast together at the island, and then going to school (and work) all filled up. That has helped me not buy out this week much. Except of course daddy thought it would be special to take them out to donuts before school this morning. Such is the life of a daddy who works a different schedule! Not taking that from him. Especially since I have a few pancake days up my sleeve...

For breakfast then I'll eat cereal with the kiddos (we love frosted mini-wheats) or yogurt with berries and granola and sometimes I'll add my homemade Chai that I drink on the way to work.

For lunch the kiddos eat at school, except on Fridays when I need to make their lunches. I almost always make "ham and cheese rollups" - nothing more than ham and cheese rolled up with a tortilla and mayonaise. My kiddo prefers that over anything else, even store-bought lunch or PB&J, and LOVES that his mommy makes it for him. I'm cherishing these days and hoping #4 catches on to the love of rollups. We've also added a rotating lunchables day - not that I love lunchables and wouldn't go for the crackers and cheese (unless homemade) - he picks the pizza which is still gross to me but it comes with fruit and water so I compromise there. #4 isn't going to get the rotating lunchable day for a long time!

Lunch for me most always consists of the remaining leftover as a core element - usually a meat of some sort, this week it has been leftover tamales - edamame from Costco (really convenient), a piece of fresh fruit (oranges are my favorite), and a diet soda, usually Coke Zero but can be Diet Pepsi if my mom has been in town recently.

Of course, I often forgo the prepared lunch for yummy alternatives - a "Steak Queso Burrito" from Qdoba or In-N-Out. Those two get me to stray from my prepped lunch all-too-frequently.

What gets you to stray from your more healthy/cheap lunch and breakfast? Please tell me I'm not alone here...

1 comment:

Everything. I hate leftovers, and often we don't cook more than we need anyway.

I love eating out. It's a horrible addiction...especially now that so many places offer low calorie/low carb options, we can even justify it by saying "Well we're staying on our healthy diet..." LOL

The only way I've been able to stop is now that we are adopting from another state, every penny we spend is one less penny we have to go visit our boys in the time until they can come home. Otherwise, eating out is like breathing air over here.